Red Hat Challenge Announces Winning Teams

In early February, Red Hat launched a contest to tap into the young, innovative minds of graduate students from around the world. Today we have the winners. The contest challenged teams of three to five students to formulate a group concept plan in response to a business challenge question. It was called the Red Hat Challenge.

The challenge was an open invitation for student teams to create an innovative approach to a Red Hat business opportunity and provide Red Hat with original, cutting-edge ideas to shape the future of the business model. The contest included 143 schools, 343 Teams and 977 contestants from 15 different countries. See who competed. Each team had two weeks to develop an innovative concept plan that answered the given challenge question while considering Red Hat’s history, mission and potential.

Each group submitted a concept plan that was judged by a panel of experts in the field of business and open source technology. The top five plans were selected as finalists and in the second round of judging, the teams presented a 15-minute oral presentation to a panel of Red Hat Executives followed by a question-and-answer session.

The McGill University team developed ideas for Red Hat Commons – "a new ecosystemic global source IT/IS/KM innovation platform, which permits OSS developers to purchase common shares of Red Hat based on the strength of their contributions to OSS projects." The team enjoys recognition from Red Hat for its innovative and well-thought-out idea, but gets a few other perks too. The McGill University team has the opportunity to send a team member to the Red Hat Summit in San Diego, May 9-11 to present the team’s concept plan. Additionally, each team member will be highly considered for prestigious Red Hat internships, and the team members split a $20,000 prize, too.